Namely’s chief objective was to adopt API Design First principles. As they brainstormed the application of their new principle they stumbled upon the importance of having reliable, up to date, documentation. Up until that point, they had been working with Readme, manually inputting from a template and text fields. It was time intensive and their documentation was regularly going out of date. To meet their RESTful needs, they looked to Stoplight.

Of all the documentation tools Namely tried, Stoplight was the only tool that met all of their needs. It allowed them to keep their documentation up to date through the automated sync that occurs between all of Stoplight tools (Design, Testing, Mocking, and Documentation). When changes were made in their API, their documentation immediately reflected them. In this case, the API design was driving the documentation. What started as a principle, became a search for a documentation tool, which then became a search for a single source of truth for API design. Stoplight has always espoused design first principles and once Namely found us, we realized we shared the same principle. Two RESTful pees in a design pod.